Samsung Solid SGH-M110 - Samsung Solid SGH-M110

Summary

Our Score

6/10

User Score

Review Price free/subscription

The shared mains power and headset socket is protected by a fairly standard hinged rubber cover. Drop water or shake dust in its direction when uncovered and I am sure you'll get these materials into the phone's innards.

All that rubber doesn't look very pretty. Moreover I tested this phone in quite rugged conditions over a long weekend involving hail, rain and snow - oh and plenty of mud too. I found that the rubber around the number keys was a magnet for dust motes in a pocket. If the conditions in which you intend to use this phone are dirty this could be annoying.

The screen is disappointing. It is a CSTN type which puts it a bit behind the times but frankly on a phone like this that doesn't matter. Instead, its small size (1.52in across the diagonal) and paltry 128 x 128 pixels are the annoying factors. Reading incoming texts, for example, is a challenge to do without scrolling especially because only about two thirds of the screen is given over to them. The remainder is used by softmenu options and data about who sent the message and when.

Overall this mobile is slightly bigger than your average candybar handset but not hugely so. It measures 109mm tall, 48mm wide and 17.9mm thick, and weighs in at 95g. All perfectly acceptable.

When it comes to the features on offer nothing is particularly tempting apart from good battery life and a special SOS feature that can autodial an emergency number if you hit the volume button three times.

To test the battery life, with no music player built in I could have chosen to run down the FM radio instead. But rather than that I just left the handset on standby to see how long it could keep going with the odd phone call and other bits and bobs of use.

Samsung reckons you should get 140 hours of standby usage which works out to almost six days. In practice, however, I actually got 15 days worth of standby time and that included the odd call and text.